“Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist
C 26
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook C (1772-1773)
“A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.”
Book II, Chapter V; translation by Andrew P. Peabody
Tusculanae Disputationes – Tusculan Disputations (45 BC)
Context: A: For what stronger proof can there be of its [philosophy's] uselessness than that some accomplished philosophers lead disgraceful lives?
M: It is no proof at all; for as all cultivated fields are not harvest-yielding [... ] so all cultivated minds do not bear fruit. To continue the figure – as a field, though fertile, cannot yield a harvest without cultivation, no more can the mind without learning; thus each is feeble without the other. But philosophy is the cultivation of the soul. It draws out vices by the root, prepares the mind to receive seed, and commits to it, and, so to speak, sows in it what, when grown, may bear the most abundant fruit.
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Marcus Tullius Cicero180
Roman philosopher and statesman -106–-43 BCRelated quotes
Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin
As quoted in Wilhelm von Humboldt (1970), by P. Berglar, p. 87, and "Profiles of Educators: Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835)" by Karl-Heinz Günther, in Prospects, Vol. 18, Issue 1 (March 1988)
Context: There are undeniably certain kinds of knowledge that must be of a general nature and, more importantly, a certain cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to be without. People obviously cannot be good craftworkers, merchants, soldiers or businessmen unless, regardless of their occupation, they are good, upstanding and – according to their condition – well-informed human beings and citizens. If this basis is laid through schooling, vocational skills are easily acquired later on, and a person is always free to move from one occupation to another, as so often happens in life.
“For neither talent without instruction nor instruction without talent can produce the perfect craftsman.”
Neque enim ingenium sine disciplina aut disciplina sine ingenio perfectum artificem potest efficere.
Vitruvius book De architectura
Neither natural ability without instruction nor instruction without natural ability can make the perfect artist.
Morris Hicky Morgan translation
Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I, Sec. 3; translation by Frank Granger
“Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.”
Baltasar Gracián (1601–1658) Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer and philosopher
Dante Alighieri book Vita Nuova
Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa...
e così esser l'un sanza l'altro osa
com'alma razional sanza ragione.
Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter XVI (tr. Mark Musa)
Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan
The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 29 (See also: Rene Girard)
Leviathan (1651)
Zbigniew Brzeziński book The Grand Chessboard
Source: The Grand Chessboard (1997), Chapter 4, The Black Hole, p. 122.
“But the fruit that can fall without shaking
Indeed is too mellow for me.”
Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) writer and poet from England
The Answer.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Nakayama Miki (1798–1887) Founder of Tenrikyo
Anecdotes of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo, from Anecdote 158, "Monthly Period is the Flower," p. 128.
Anecdotes of Oyasama